A war briefly flared up between Substack and Twitter, with writers noticing that they were no longer able to promote their Substack posts on Twitter, which is absurd. This is not a problem with the platform. The New York Times confirmed that Twitter was, for a time, taking aim at posts that linked to its rival Substack. The reason, apparently, was because Substack is planning to roll out a new product called Notes, which, as stated by the platform, is a way for posts, ideas and discussions to travel through the Substack network. This sounds like a handy tool and a quicker way for people to see your work, but someone at Twitter saw it as a threat to its business model.
I was annoyed when I heard this story as I started my writing journey on Substack and rely on Twitter to get my posts out there for the world to enjoy. I posted my latest match report on Twitter and, thankfully, it has not been taken down. Initially, however, nobody was able to like, comment, retweet or click on the link. Also, if you clicked on the link, it came up with a warning saying: “this link may be unsafe”. How many people are going to click on a link that says that? It looks as if Twitter has turned off that warning now, but I do not understand how a blog on a football match could ever have been thought potentially harmful. It was bizarre.
Twitter is the most useful way for me to enable people that do not follow me on Substack to see my articles. Also, it is a great way for the media and celebrities to cite me. Not many social media platforms allow you to connect with these people, which is something I have been working hard to achieve.
Not only did this spat affect me, it hurt the people who make a living from using Substack. There are many journalists who spend their life building a blog to gain paid subscribers, which they rely on to earn money. Like me, they use twitter to promote their Substack posts and gain subscribers. If that becomes difficult, they will suffer.
Thankfully, it looks as if this has been sorted out now. Considering Elon Musk claims to be a great believer in free speech, his behaviour on this issue didn’t make sense. He should have prevented this and I’m glad he now appears to have fixed the problem.
Jack Watson is a 14 year-old pupil at Sirius North Academy, Kingston upon Hull. He blogs about being a Hull City fan at Ten Foot Tigers.
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A warning that clicking on a link to a 3rd party platform is a perfectly reasonable and sensible precaution, it protects Twitters users from malicious sites they can’t check (to make sure your blog is safe but someone’s site hosting a scam isn’t) every link.
Surely if Twitter wants to offer you a free service, but place certain restrictions on that to protect their business model, that also is perfectly reasonable? You dont have to use Twitter, maybe a better alternative could spring up, maybe on Substack one already has?
I agree up to a point but tend to think that in the long term it’s better to keep up with or beat your commercial rivals by being better than them and improving your own product.
But what they did temporarily was preferable to the political stuff Twitter used to engage in.
I’m not a fan of warnings regarding external sites – it should be caveat emptor. It’s just yet more noise and again has been and is being abused by many platforms for political purposes.
I think this is a matter between Twitter and Substack which unfortunately has affected some user who rely on both. It’s resolved now it seems. But Twitter is not wrong here. Copyright also covers collated and mechanised works. If you have spent effort building a database of public phone numbers or compiling a dictionary of words or word games, others are not allowed to copy and sell your collation. In these two examples proving that has been done would be difficult or near impossible as only a few changes are required to obscure any and all clue as to how the material has been gathered and if you happen to have collated the same materials through your own efforts, that is perfectly legal. But in this Substack/Twitter spat, Substack had been engaging in industrialised (read automated) scraping of Twitter tweets referring users to Substack and Twitter could see the Substack servers doing it; presumably in order to encourage or enable conversation threads in their new service branching off of those tweets. If they were doing that, it is copyright theft. This doesn’t relate to theft of the content of the tweets themselves, which are referred to and quoted publicly all over the place, but theft of Twitter’s work-effort their database – the collation.
Thanks for that – I wasn’t aware of this. If that’s the case then Twitter have a point. Glad it seems to have been resolved.
Young Jack – buy your own domain.
e.g. http://www.jackwatson.press is still available
And making and maintaining your own website will be a useful string to your bow (if you haven’t done such things already, it is a lot easier these days!)
If you want to keep using Twitter (I can fully understand why you will feel you still need to, even if you don’t want to) then publicising that domain on Twitter shouldn’t cause you any issues. I understand you can plug Substack functionality into your own domain, too.
Good luck and keep kicking, young fella mi lad.
Twitter is “a great way for the media and celebrities to cite me. Not many social media platforms allow you to connect with these people, which is something I have been working hard to achieve.”
I wouldn’t bother chasing celebrities, it will only end in tears. Rely on your own abilities. If your work is good enough you will make it.
First and foremost Elon Musk is an entrepreneur businessman and a fantastically successful one. He will act to protect his business in a very competitive world of social media. That’s all there is to know.